Steganography of Complex Networks
This work addresses the need for steganography in complex networks, offering potential applications like watermarking datasets or privacy preservation, but it is incremental as it extends existing steganography techniques to a new media type.
The paper tackles the problem of using complex networks as cover media for steganography, introducing three algorithms (BIND, BYMOND, BYNIS) that successfully hide secret messages in edge lists without altering network structures, as demonstrated in encoding simulations on Open Graph Benchmark networks.
Steganography is one of the information hiding techniques, which conceals secret messages in cover media. Digital image and audio are the most studied cover media for steganography. However, so far, there is no research on steganography to utilize complex networks as cover media. To investigate the possibility and feasibility of complex networks as cover media for steganography, we introduce steganography of complex networks through three algorithms: BIND, BYMOND, and BYNIS. BIND hides two bits of a secret message in an edge, while BYMOND encodes a byte in an edge, without changing the original network structures. Encoding simulation experiments for the networks of Open Graph Benchmark demonstrated BIND and BYMOND can successfully hide random messages in the edge lists. BYNIS synthesizes edges by generating node identifiers from a given message. The degree distribution of stego network synthesized by BYNIS was mostly close to a power-law. Steganography of complex networks is expected to have applications such as watermarking to protect proprietary datasets, or sensitive information hiding for privacy preservation.